Sometime Thursday night, timelines stopped updating for a number of users on X, the social network owned by billionaire Elon Musk.
Many users report that their notifications stopped working yesterday, meaning they aren’t being alerted to new posts by the people they follow on X. This reporter is experiencing the issue, as well. My X timeline hasn’t updated in 15 hours, since around 6 p.m. Eastern on May 8.
It appears to be a server-side bug. Users affected say that their timelines aren’t updating in the X mobile apps or on the web. That’s what this reporter is seeing, as well. Switching devices and browsers appears to make no difference, nor does signing up for X’s subscription service, X Premium.
Downdetector, a website that provides real-time information about the status of various applications and services, shows a spike in reports of X outages over the last 24 hours. Meanwhile, on Reddit, several threads about the X notifications issue popped up overnight.
“No notifications since about 10 p.m. last night here in Germany!” wrote one user in a thread on X’s unofficial subreddit. Another user in the same thread wrote, “I thought that uninstalling and reinstalling the app would work (it didn’t).”
X didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The last major outage X suffered was in March, when users worldwide were abruptly disconnected from the social network and subsequently had trouble accessing their feeds, sending messages, and engaging with content. Musk, without evidence, blamed the disruption on a cyberattack.
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Prior to that outage, X experienced large-scale connectivity issues in December 2022 and July 2023.
After Musk acquired X, formerly known as Twitter, for $44 billion in 2022, he promptly slashed the company’s workforce by about 80% from 7,500 employees to 1,300 workers. X had just 550 full-time engineers as of January 2023, according to CNBC. A new wave of layoffs hit the company in November 2024, primarily affecting X’s engineering department.
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Over $10 billion — that’s how much revenue Apple’s U.S. App Store raked in last year, according to a new analysis by app intelligence provider Appfigures.
The firm’s estimates indicate that U.S. App Store revenue from commissions more than doubled between 2020 and 2024. In 2020, Apple’s share of App Store commissions was approximately $4.76 billion, growing to over $10.1 billion by 2024.
Based on Appfigures’ data, U.S. App Store developers generated $33.68 billion in gross revenue from their apps and games using Apple’s payments system in 2024, and took home $23.57 billion after Apple’s cut.
Though Apple doesn’t typically break out its App Store revenue during earnings, it did publish a report in May 2023 where it said the App Store globally generated $104 billion in estimated billings for digital goods and services in 2022.
However, Appfigures’ analysis found the App Store made $61.5 billion globally in 2022, which grew to $91.3 billion in 2024. From this, Apple made more than $27.39 billion in commissions globally last year, Appfigures also said.
That leads to a discrepancy between Appfigures’ analysis and Apple’s own.
This can be explained by an important caveat found in Apple’s report. Under Apple’s chart, it states that its “billings and sales” figures are “not the same as App Store billings.” That’s important here.
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When Apple wrote its report, the company was trying to show how big the App Store is and how key it is to the overall economy, so it merged App Store revenue with revenue generated outside the App Store to generate its total for the “Billings and Sales” category.
In the report, Apple calculated the portion of an app’s total revenue that is facilitated by the App Store, even if the purchase was made elsewhere. For instance, if a user buys a subscription to Hulu on the web, but then spends 60% of their time streaming Hulu on Apple devices, Apple credits itself with facilitating 60% of that user’s spend. (To determine usage, the report relied on third-party sources, like market research firms, to estimate how much usage occurred on smartphones versus tablets, desktops, or TVs.)
Apple also allows enterprises to distribute apps with in-app purchases, but these aren’t visible in the App Store.
Examining the numbers around U.S. Apple App Store revenue is more relevant than ever in the wake of the recent court ruling that now prevents Apple from charging a 27% commission on transactions that take place outside the App Store.
Apple initially attempted to comply with the court’s injunction resulting from its antitrust battle with Fortnite maker Epic Games by making changes that wouldn’t harm App Store profits.
To do so, Apple last year gave developers a way to apply for an exception to its App Store rules so they could add web links inside their apps that directed customers to external purchases. However, Apple continued to charge a 27% commission on those purchases and dictated how the website links should appear. (This even included the use of “scare screens” to warn consumers of the dangers of making purchases outside the App Store.)
Last week, a judge ruled that Apple was in “willful violation” of the 2021 injunction by continuing to collect fees on purchases made outside apps and by creating new anticompetitive barriers.
This decision forced Apple to update its U.S. App Store rules, which now allow developers to link out to other ways for consumers to make purchases, without obstacles or commissions. Since then, several apps have taken advantage of the ability to introduce web payments, including Spotify, Amazon Kindle, and Patreon. One small game emulator called Delta is now supporting itself via Patreon memberships, too.
Apple is appealing the decision, arguing in its most recent filing that the ruling causes Apple “grave irreparable harm.”
“These restrictions, which will cost Apple substantial sums annually, are based on conduct that has never been adjudicated to be (and is not) unlawful,” Apple’s filing stated. “Rather, they were imposed to punish Apple for purported non-compliance with an earlier state-law injunction that is itself invalid.”
This argument won’t likely go over well with developers, as many believe Apple should have lowered commissions for everyone years ago, not just for small business developers.
Appfigures’ analysis also broke down U.S. App Store revenue by apps and games, which generated Apple approximately $6.28 billion and $3.83 billion, respectively, in 2024.
Together, these figures highlight how critical App Store revenue remains to Apple’s bottom line, and why it’s fighting so hard to retain control.
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Instagram Threads will begin testing video ads, Meta announced on Thursday. The test, which will make Threads look more like its competitor X, is an expansion of Threads’ advertising initiatives, which began last month with the opening up of ads to global advertisers.
The news was announced at Meta’s presentation at the IAB NewFronts, where a number of social media companies pitch themselves to advertisers.
On Threads, Meta says a “small number” of advertisers will test 19:9 or 1:1 video ad creatives that will appear in between pieces of organic content in the Threads feed. The company didn’t share other details around pricing or frequency of those ads, however.
The update follows Meta’s recent announcement that Threads now reaches over 350 million monthly active users. The app has also seen a 35% increase in the time spent on Threads as a result of improvements to the app’s recommendation systems, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also told investors on Meta’s earnings call in April.
Meta announced the news around Threads, among other updates to its ad products, at the NewFronts.
The company says it’s also testing a new short-form video solution, Reels trending ads, that will be shown next to the most trending Reels from creators.
Rival TikTok this week had also introduced an expansion of its similar offering, called Pulse Suite, which will now let advertisers market themselves next to trending content by category, holiday, tentpole moments, cultural events, and evergreen, always-on content from sports, entertainment, and lifestyle publishers.
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Meta will also begin to test Trends in Instagram’s Creator Marketplace to help advertisers find popular trends, and it will test the Creator Marketplace API to help businesses find and connect with quality creators at scale.
The company is also rolling out Video Expansion on Facebook Reels, which adjusts video assets by generating unseen pixels in each video frame to expand the aspect ratio for a more native experience.
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Google announced on Thursday that it’s rolling out new AI-powered defenses to help combat scams on Chrome. The tech giant is going to start using Gemini Nano, its on-device large language model (LLM), on desktop to protect users against online scams. It’s also launching new AI-powered warnings for Chrome on Android to help users be aware of spammy notifications.
Google notes that Chrome’s Enhanced Protection mode of Safe Browsing on Chrome offers the highest level of protection, offering users twice the protection against phishing and other online threats compared to the browser’s Standard Protection mode. Now Google will use Gemini Nano to provide Enhanced Protection users with an additional layer of defense against online scams.
Google says this on-device approach will provide immediate insight into risky websites to protect users against scams, including those that haven’t been seen before.
“Gemini Nano’s LLM is perfect for this use because of its ability to distill the varied, complex nature of websites, helping us adapt to new scam tactics more quickly,” Google said in a blog post.
The company is already using this AI-powered defense to protect users from remote tech support claims. Google plans to expand this defense to Android devices and even more types of scams in the future.
As for the new AI-powered warnings, Google notes that the risk from scammy sites can extend beyond the site itself through notifications if you have them enabled. Malicious websites can use notifications to try to scam you, which is why Chrome will now help you be aware of malicious, spammy, or misleading notifications on Android.
Now when Chrome’s on-device machine learning model flags a notification as possibly being a scam, you will receive a warning. You can choose to either unsubscribe or view the content that was blocked. If you think the warning was shown incorrectly, you can allow all future notifications from that site.
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As part of today’s announcement, Google shared that it has been using AI to stop scams in Search by detecting and blocking hundreds of millions of scammy results every day. Its AI-powered scam detection systems have helped to catch 20 times the number of scammy pages, Google says.
For example, Google has seen an increase in bad actors impersonating airline customer service agents and scamming people looking for help. The company says it has reduced these scams by more than 80%, decreasing the risk of users coming across a scammy phone number on Search.
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Dating app giant Match Group is laying off 13% of its staff as part of a reorganization that aims to reduce costs, shore up margins, and streamline its organizational structure.
The layoff would affect about 325 employees, based on the 2,500 employees Match had as of December 2024, per its annual filing. Open roles are also being closed.
The reorganization is meant to reduce management layers, with about one in five managers affected, and centralize key functions — including technology and data services, customer care and content moderation, media buying, and international go-to-market functions, the company said.
Spencer Rascoff, who came on board as CEO in February, said in a statement that the move was aimed at helping Match operate as one company, not brands that are managed independently. Match is the parent company of several popular dating apps, including Tinder, Hinge, Match.com, Meetic, OkCupid, Hinge, Plenty of Fish, and OurTime.
The cost cuts and reorganization would help Match save over $100 million (annualized), and about $45 million in 2025, Rascoff said in a statement.
Match also said first-quarter revenue declined 3% to $831.2 million from a year earlier due to a 5% drop in the number of users who paid for a service or subscription. Net profit declined 4.6% year-on-year to $117.6 million.
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In an attempt to protect a valuable revenue stream, Apple is trying to delay a court ruling that forces the company to let iOS app developers in the U.S. redirect users to external payment systems and avoid paying a commission to the iPhone maker.
The company filed an emergency motion late on Wednesday, asking an appeals court to grant a partial stay on a previous ruling.
A U.S. court last week ruled in favor of Epic Games in a long-running case against Apple, after Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers found that Apple did not comply with an order that was handed down in 2021.
The new ruling forces Apple to let apps on its U.S. App Store include features that could redirect users to external systems for making purchases, stop collecting commissions on those payments, and stop showing “scare screens” — pop-up messages warning users of the dangers of making in-app purchases from non-Apple systems.
Apple is now asking for a stay on the prohibitions on “charging a cut of transactions that users make via external purchase links, and setting any conditions on the language or placement of links or other references to external purchase options.”
Apple argues that the new ruling is unwarranted, saying it “dramatically” increases the scope of the earlier injunction, as the court did not originally bar the company from charging commissions on non-Apple payment systems — Apple had not started doing that at the time.
Apple says it complied with the court’s 2021 injunction by letting developers link out to non-Apple payment systems. We must note that it charged app developers a 27% cut on those transactions anyway, in addition to showing the “scare screens” described above.
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The new order would result in significant losses, the company said. “These restrictions, which will cost Apple substantial sums annually, are based on conduct that has never been adjudicated to be (and is not) unlawful; rather, they were imposed to punish Apple for purported non-compliance with an earlier state-law Injunction that is itself invalid,” it said in the filing.
“Without a stay, these extraordinary intrusions into Apple’s business will cause grave irreparable harm,” the company said.
The iPhone maker filed an appeal against the court decision earlier this week. The company has already complied with the order and is allowing developers to link users out to complete purchases outside the App Store ecosystem. Companies like Spotify and Amazon have already updated their apps to redirect users to their own websites for payments.
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